Game of Life parts one and two
by szhismine
Summary: my own version of the season three premiere written before it aired


Title: The Game of Life Part One  
  
Authors note: this is my not so Harper based idea of a season 3 premiere, and it's in 2 parts. When the first part is done, the second part will be posted in this thread.  
  
Rating: Pg to Pg-13 (more pg)  
  
Spoilers: seasons 1 and 2 (kinda, those are the seasons i saw)   
  
Disclaimer: all the andromeda characters, the delegates, and the weirdo aliens aren't mine. yet.   
  
Archive: i literally beg you.  
***********  
If Frederich Nietzsche wanted to feel so superior, he shouldn't have created the Nietzscheans.  
-Chronicles of The Knights of Genetic Purity vol. 5  
CY 10025  
***********  
  
  
"Beka? Tyr?" Dylan yelled as he continued the hard search on the trashed Maru. He tried not to think of where they were if they got blown into the hole in the Maru's bulkhead.  
  
"Beka? Trance entered the airlock. Something wasn't right . . . "Tyr?" she yelled, and joined Dylan in wandering around the big trash heap that was the Maru's exterior. "They can't be dead . . ." Trance whispered.   
  
"Aw man, this isn't good . . . Beka?" Harper and Rommie just arrived. Dylan noticed Harper and Trance's wandering, concerned eyes were far more worried for the lives of two crew members.   
  
"Harper, Trance, um . . . I know you each had certain belongings here, if you want to look for them, because the Maru is your home too . . ." Harper looked at Trance. For a second, thier worried eyes said the same thing.   
  
"Dylan, we would rather look for Beka and Tyr. After we've found them and they've received medical attention, we can start to repair the Maru." Dylan nodded at Trance's idea. They continued the nearly hopeless search.  
  
  
  
Tyr opened his eyes. He couldn't recognize his surroundings. He sat up. He had no idea where he was, but he had a feeling wasn't on the Maru.   
  
"Are you alright?" a female voice asked him. Tyr stood up. He was in some sort of white room. He looked at the speaker. An old woman, with a cane . . . "Madam Prewar?"  
  
  
  
Beka groaned. She threw a pile of scrap metal off of her, stood up, and looked around. The Maru, her home, it was just destroyed. 'Harper will need a lot of time to fix this...' she thought.   
  
"Beka!" Trance ran over--stumbling over a pole along the way--and gave her a big hug. "You're alright!" Beka smiled. "Hey Trance."   
  
Just then, Harper and Dylan arrived in the room. "Beka!" Harper exclaimed in delight.   
  
Dylan smiled. "You know, I don't know who to give credit to for destroying the tunnel." Beka snorted.   
  
"Well, obviously that would be me, I'm the one who risked my ass."   
  
"Yeah well, I'm the one who told everyone what would happen."   
  
"Yeah, but did any of you actually [I]build[/I] the Roseanne, I don't think so..." they continued arguing until Rommie came in and asked, "Beka, do you know where Tyr is?" Beka's small grin faded. "Well, see, an alien attacked Tyr, and before I passed out, I thought I saw Tyr get pulled through the wall. So, in other words..."   
  
"He's dead." Rommie finished for her. Everyone looked down at the floor. Everyone that is, except Harper, who looked around at everyone like they were crazy. "Whoh, whoh, hold on a second. Maybe he's not dead. I mean, come on, maybe he's just held captive as a hostage or-or something. Heck, maybe he's with all the other delegates that-that got sucked through th-the wall..." Harper finished stammering with a sad look in his eyes. "I don't think he's de-dead." he added simply. Beka smiled slighty and put her hand on his shoulder.   
  
Harper gave everyone his 'disappointed-but-understanding-and-thanks-anyway' smiles. He sighed and took out his new, high-tech analyzer and turned it on. He got it for a bargain at El Dorado Drift. "Hey guys, according to this, there is a gravity well left after one of the delegates that's open for a limited amount of time. So, that must mean that they were [I]ALL[/I] pulled into the aliens dimension." Dylan and Beka nodded, but Rommie frowned.   
  
"But, why couldn't I see it before?"   
  
Harper shrugged and shook his head. He checked his analyzer. "I think the wave patterns weren't very obvious for the ship's sensors, but I think the main reason is probably because only when you analyzed a specific area you could find the gravity well, as it's only in one random area."   
  
"So... where is it?" Dylan asked. Harper checked his analyzer. "It's on the ceiling of deck 19, sector 3."   
  
Beka suddenly realized something. "That's where Severin disappeared!" Beka exclaimed. {imagine the aliens point of view looking at Beka} "So, are you saying we have a chance to save the delegates?" Dylan asked Harper. {alien looking at Dylan, then to Harper} "Yep. Basically all we have {alien focuses on Harper's neck} to do is-" {alien lunges at Harper}.   
  
But no one ever found out what you had to do. The aliens hand suddenly appeared, and before anyone could react, the hand rapped itself around Harper's neck and started pulling him into the wall. "No!" Dylan grabbed his forcelance and started to shoot at the wall, but it was all in vain. The only trace left of Harper was his analyzer, which fell to the floor.   
  
Dylan, with a shocked look, walked over, bent down, and picked it up. Underneath it, he saw a picture of two people. As Dylan looked at it, he realized they must be someone's parents. He decided to look more closely at it later.   
  
"Dylan?" Dylan looked at the speaker, Rommie, who was crying now for both Harper and Tyr. "What do you think he wanted to say?"   
  
Dylan stood up. "I don't know, but whatever it was, the aliens didn't want us to find out." Rommie nodded, then closed her eyes to try to block out the tears that were forming in hre eyes.  
  
  
  
Tyr, Madame Prewar and Ambassador Orgo were standing around Severin, who seemed to be in a very unpleasant coma.   
  
"What's wrong with him?" Tyr asked in a monotonous voice. Madame Prewar knelt down next to Severin and turned his head sideways. There was an odd-shaped metal tag on his forehead.   
  
"See this? It releases cyanide 286, a new drug which is highly poisonous, into the bloodstream. It kills within an hour." Before Tyr cold reply, the wall in front of them shimmered and swirled into a massive whirpool, and suddenly, Harper was hurled out of it so hard he slammed into Ambassador Orgo, and they both fell to the floor with a loud thud. The wall returned to it's original state. Orgo quickly got up.   
  
Tyr walked over to Harper, who was in a mess on the floor. He helped Harper get up and set him against the wall. Tyr knelt down close to him.   
  
"Harper?" Tyr asked softly. Harper looked at him, trying to focus his eyes and to come to his senses.   
  
"Tyr?" he asked in a weak, almost forced voice. Tyr nodded. Harper smiled. "Evreyone thought you were dead. Except me," Harper murmured. He tried to get up, but failed miserably. Tyr held the back of Harper's head so he could get up easier, but Tyr's hand suddenly felt wet. He withdrew his hand, and he saw a red liquid on it--blood. Tyr looked, horrified, from his hand to Harper, who was breathing in ragged gasps. He seemed out of focus again.   
  
"Boy?" Harper didn't reply, instead he kept gasping for breath. Tyr growled, and wiped his hand off on his pants. Orgo looked at Harper and said something in a strange language to Madame Prewar, who nodded. She turned to Tyr.   
  
"Ambassador Orgo says we might not be able to save him." Tyr, who wsa holding Harper's chest to keep him from falling and to help ease his breathing, frowned.   
  
"Tell Orgo he [B]will[/B] survive, even without medical assistance." Madame Prewar translated to Orgo, who said something back. Madam Prewar said, "Orgo says he hopes he will." Tyr chuckled, then sighed.   
  
'The little professor has survived before, but this time...' Tyr thought. "We have to stop the bleeding." Tyr said.   
  
Suddenly, the wall turned into a whirlpool again.  
  
  
  
"Uh, Dylan, can we look down now? My neck hurts." Beka whined.   
  
Dylan sighed. He had hoped they would find a clue with the ceiling, but so far they had no luck. Dylan was standing on a stepladder, feeling the ceiling.   
  
"Do you think the gravity well closed?" Trance asked. Dylan didn't reply. Finally, Dylan found what he was looking for. A little space, where his hand slipped through the wall.   
  
"I found it!" Dylan exclaimed.   
  
"Be careful Dylan." Beka said. Dylan stuck his head through the wall.   
  
"Captain Hunt?" Madam Prewar nearly fell when she saw Dylan.   
  
Dylan reached out his hand. "Come on, and be careful, the wall is actually part of the ceiling." Madam Prewar stumbled over and took Dylan's hand.Dylan easily pulled Madam Prewar out. She lost her footing and fell, but Trance and Beka kept her from falling on her back. Dylan stuck his head back in. "Tyr?" he yelled. Tyr looked over at Dylan.   
  
"What?" he yelled back. Dylan nodded towards Harper. "What's wrong with him?"   
  
"He hit his head too hard, and he's bleeding severly."   
  
"Look, I don't know how much time we have. You will have to be last." Tyr nodded. Orgo took Dylan's hand, and he too fell from the ceiling. As Dylan stuck his head back in the ceiling, he saw a [B]major[/B] problem. One of the aliens was attacking Tyr, and before Dylan could help, Tyr was pushed out of wall. The alien disappeared, just as Harper regained consiousness.   
  
"Dylan?" Harper said. He stood up--with some difficulty--and stumbled towards Dylan, only to fall down again.   
  
Dylan could tell he lost a lot of blood. Harper's face was a cross of white and a sickening color of grey. His chest heaved heavily. His face was covered in sweat. He was starting to have convulsions, and his eyes were bulging. His breath got shorter and rapider.  
  
'No! He can't die! Not now!' Dylan thought. He started going in further, but a hand grabbed his foot. He knew what it meant. If he went in any further, he could wind up stuck in the room with Harper. Dylan groaned.   
  
"Harper?" he didn't get any response, but he knew Harper was still alive because he was squirming on the floor.   
  
"Harper?"   
  
This time, Harper looked at him. He was like a fish dying on the sandy shores of a beach.   
  
"Harper, listen to me. I can help you, but you have to come over here. Please." Dylan demanded softly. His voice was calm, but desperate, and his pleading eyes showed that he didn't want to lose a friend.   
  
"Please?" Dylan asked again softly. Somehow, Harper managed to nod and he slowly got up. he was at least 10 feet from Dylan. Before he walked 8 feet, however, he collapsed. He stayed still for a while, then stretched out his hand. Dylan stretched. Their hands touched. Suddenly, the room caved in, and Harper and Dylan were thrown onto the floor. Dylan quickly got up.   
  
"Harper?" Dylan said, and stumbled his way over to his prone figure.   
  
"Harper!" Dylan quickly felt for a pulse. At first, he thought Harper wasn't breathing. Then, he felt a very weak pulse. "Get two droids with a stretcher and medical equipment over here [I][B]NOW[/I][/B]!"   
  
He emphasized the word 'now'. He was so afraid that Harper would die right there on the spot. Trance checked Harper over before the 'bots arrived.   
  
When they did arrive, Dylan and Tyr carefully lifted him on the stretcher, and they rolled him to Medical.   
  
"Come on Harper. Stay with us." Beka whispered as she stroked Harper's messy blond hair. Dylan silently agreed with her.  
  
  
  
In Medical, everyone was doing everything they could do to help.   
Everyone, that is, except Dylan, who was sulking at the back. He couldn't help feeling bad, as though it was his fault Harper was this way, even though he knew it wasn't. But everyone was too busy doing something to notice Dylan. Beka was holding the oxygen mask to Harper's mouth, and was speaking softly to him. Tyr was directing the blood transfusions. Rommie was preparing the IV, and Trance was preparing hyposprays. Even Madam Prewar and Ambassador Orgo were helping; they were cleaning the surgical equipment. Trance said, "Ok, everyone out Harper has to have major surgery." As Dylan passed, she gave him a small hug.  
  
  
  
Several hours later, a very tired Trance emerged from Medical. Everyone was sleeping on the floor. Trance giggled.   
  
"Guys? Guys?" Only Madam Prewar woke up, and went next to Trance.   
  
"Don't worry, I'll make them up," she assured Trance. She cleared her throat. "Wake up NOW, front and center!"   
  
Dylan woke up with a start and commanded, "Andromeda, activate Defensive Missiles!"   
  
Beka woke up next, yelling, "transiting to slipstream!"   
  
Rommie opened her eyes and said, "Activating Internal Defenses."   
  
Tyr didn't say anything at all, but jumped up and fired a few rounds at the wall. After they calmed down a bit, they all felt VERY stupid. Then, they turned and saw Trance laughing like crazy, and Madan Prewar with a very big grin on her face. "That works every time," she told Trance. Dylan rubbed his face with his hands and sighed.   
  
"How's Harper?" he asked Trance.   
  
She smiled. "He's awake, if you want to see him." Beka passed by Trance and went in.   
  
Everyone else filed in, but Dylan held Trance back. "How bad is it?" Dylan's three hundred and forty-three year old face was showing every one of it's three hundred and forty-three years. Trance shook her her head.   
  
"He's getting better, but his brain was damaged severly. If he makes it the first few hours he should have a chance for at least a slow recovery, and he might need more surgery, but he should be okay." Dylan nodded.   
  
"I hope you're right, Trance." Dylan looked into Medical to see Beka give Harper a big hug, which Harper "gladly" returned. "I hope you're right."  
  
End of Part One  
**************************************************************  
  
The Game of Life: Part Two  
  
Summary:In the first part, Beka is found uninjured on the Maru after dropping the Roseanne into the dimensional tunnel. She informs everyone that Tyr was most likely kidnapped by the aliens. Tyr was in the other dimension with the other delegates that were assaulted.   
Meanwhile, Harper finds out that onboard the [I]Andromeda[/I] there is a gravity well, in the ceiling Severin was pulled through. However, the aliens also took Harper before he could tell them what to do. He winds up in the same dimension as Tyr and the delagates, bleeding seriously. Dylan manages to pull them all out of the dimension before it collapses. Trance gives Harper major surgery, and at the end he is awake and on the road to recovery.  
  
Spoilers:basically seasons 1&2.  
  
Rating:Pg to Pg-13.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own Andromeda, yadayadayada.  
  
*******************  
Nietzscheans have a dark side.  
Humans have a dark side.  
Magog have a horrible side.  
Who's to say who's superior?  
-Cerebus Khmer  
"Aphorisms" CY 9869  
******************  
  
  
Trance was right. He pulled through the first few days (with some close calls), and now, 3 weeks later, he was starting to make a quick recovery. One day, Trance walked into Medical to find Harper and Beka arguing about Sparky Cola. "C'mon boss, please?" Harper pleaded. Beka frowned. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to have any stimulants after all the surgery you had."   
  
"Actually, Beka," Trance intervened. "It would be a good idea for him to have stimulants. Since he lost a lot of blood, he might not have enough energy to do even normal everyday things. Stimulants, like Sparky Cola, might be able to change that. To tell you the truth, he's practically obliged to have Sparky's." Harper quickly gave Trance a hug. "Thanks, my golden goddess!" Trance smiled. Beka looked ready to kill. Before she could complain, Dylan walked in. "Hey, Harper," he said.   
  
"Hi." Harper always seemed to be uncomfortable around Dylan nowadays, and Dylan knew why. Harper has had his moments of weakness before, like everyone else, but almost dying in another universe isn't something Harper--or anyone--wants someone else to see. It almost reminded Dylan of Tyr, not wanting anyone to see his weakness. "Clear the deck," Dylan ordered. Trance and Beka left. As Trance was walking, she could sense she would soon have a vision. She went to her quarters, sat down, and let the vision come to her slowly. When her vision passed, she interpreted it and let out a gasp. She could tell someone about what she saw, but no one could do anything about it. It was destiny, nothing could be changed, no matter how hard she tried.  
Seamus Harper was going to die tomorrow.  
  
  
  
"What's up, Dylan?" Harper asked almost nervously. Dylan smiled.   
  
"Tomorrow--if you feel up to it of course-you can start working. On one condition--" Harper groaned. "I hate conditions."   
  
"--On the condition that you don't over-exert yourself." Harper sighed. "Ok, boss, whatever you say," he said while rolling his eyes. Dylan turned to leave. "Oh, Harper?" Dylan turned back. "Yeah?" Dylan smiled. "I'm glad you're okay. Harper grinned back. "So am I." Dylan nodded.   
  
"Dylan?" Trance was in the doorway. "Could I talk to you?" her voice seemed concerned. Dylan left medical. "What's wrong, Trance?" Trance decided to get right to the point. "Harper's going to to die tomorrow." This wasn't what Dylan was expecting. "What?" At first he thought he heard her wrong. "I had a vision. One way or another, he's going to die." Trance explained hesitantly. Dylan paced around the floor, then turned back to Trance. "T-there must be some mistake, I mean . . ." Trance shook her head. "I know what I saw." Dylan sighed. "B-but maybe we can change what will happen--"   
  
"DYLAN! Listen to me. It's [I]destiny[/I]. Nothing is going to change that."   
  
Dylan still didn't believe her. He decided to level with her. "In the future you came from, if you had a vision, or... something that would tell you what would happen, would you warn who it concerned? Or would it be destiny, nothing could be changed?"   
  
Trance nodded. "It was destiny, nothing could be changed." "But if nothing could be changed, why is it changed now?" Trance didn't reply. She knew he was right, and that was almost comforting to her.  
  
"[I][B]What!?[/B][/I]"Harper yelled so loud he could have sworn he could hear his uncle yell back 'shut up, I'm trying to sleep!' Dylan and Trance decided it best to inform everyone, so they could 'brace themselves'. They expected Harper to be shocked--along with everyone else--but they didn't expect what happened next.   
  
"Fine." Harper stood up. "Fine. Whatever. You know what? I don't care. If I'm going to die in the next 24 hours, I'm gonna die somewhere else than this damn place. Like on the waves of Infinity Atoll." He walked briskly out of Medical, leaving a shocked crew behind.  
  
  
  
Dylan was the first to recover. He left Medical and looked around to see Harper storming down the corridor.  
  
"Harper?" Harper didn't stop walking. "Harper?" Dylan caught up and stopped him from walking away. "What the hell was that?"   
  
Harper didn't like confronting a guy who was taller and stronger than him, especially if it was his boss, but he did all the same. "Look, I'm tired of my life being at risk [I]here[/I], onboard the Andromeda. If I'm gonna die, then I'm going to spend my time enjoying myself for a change."   
Dylan let out an exsasperated sigh. "[I]If[/I] you die. [I]If[/I]. If you leave, and none of us are with you, you might [B]actually[/B] die." Harper also let out a sigh, and stated the obvious.   
  
"The odds of me dying--"  
  
"--Are less if you stay here." Dylan didn't want Harper to get the better of him.  
  
"I'm a High Guard captain, and I'm not going to give a member of my crew a chance to commit suicide." Harper sighed again. Then he thought of something that was bugging him for a long time.  
  
"Dylan, why [I]don't[/I] you want me to die?"   
  
Dylan was stumped by the question. "W-what do you mean?"   
Harper was pleased to hear the stupidity in his voice, but he too seemed stumped--by his own question. "Uh..." he stared at Dylan's confused face. "Ok. Um, I guess you all consider me your friend?" Dylan nodded. "Ok. But I'm surprised you do, because I'm annoying and I always get on everyone's nerves. I make mistakes. It's because of me that the Magog World Ship attacked. It's becasue of me most of you guys were on it, including Rev Bem. Because he was on the ship, he left, and Trance changed places with herself. Hohne is dead because of me. Because I couldn't save him. Because I built the tesseract machine. I built it because the Magog infested me [I]on the Magog World Ship[/I]. The only use I am [B]here[/B] is to be the engineer. One or two times I came close to dying just to save your asses. Remember when I had to build the Footprint Magnification System, and when Yeager was chasing me? And when I built the anti-proton catalyzed fusion device, and it was like [I]I[/I] was the one who killed 100,000 nietzscheans. Don't forget when we first found the Andromeda, I was the one who figured out how to get more power so we could pull you and the Andromeda out of the black hole. I built the Roseanne, for crying out loud. Hell, I was the one who figured out who killed Sebastian Lee! That was a murder! I also built Rommie, and I built new worker droids. And what did I get in return?" Harper was yelling now, he couldn't help it. Dylan was shocked. He never thought too deeply about a crewman's mistake. About anyone.   
  
"Well, I...uh..."   
  
"[I][B]NOTHING[/B][/I]!Nothing! The only thing I ever got for my troubles was a "good job" here and there and once a "he'll live" from Trance. The only reason everyone wants me alive iis to fix the damn ship." he stopped yelling, and suddenly realized what he said with tears in his eyes. He admitted his pain, his worries from one mistake. His feelings that he kept bottled up for so long. The reason he wanted to die after Hohne was killed. Why he wanted to die after he was infested with magog eggs. A perfect reason to end his unsufferable misery. Unfourtunatly, he was yelling so loud everyone heard him. All over one big, stupid mistake. Harper turned and ran off, once again leaving a shocked crew behind.  
  
  
  
"What was that all about?"  
  
Dylan jumped. "Beka, don't do that."  
  
"Sorry," she replied. She walked over to him. Beka seemed just as worried, shocked, and appaled as everyone else. "But what..."  
  
Dylan put up a hand to stop her from talking. "That's it. Everyone, staff meeting on Command Deck . . . [I]now[/I]," he pushed Beka to start walking.  
  
Fifteen minutes later, everyone excluding Harper was in Command. Everyone there wa worried, but most especially Beka, Tyr, and Trance. They knew Harper was telling the absolute, 100% truth. Rommie and Dylan shrugged it off as stress, but Trance couldn't let them ignore it. "Dylan, we have to help Harper. What he said back there, it was the truth," Trance said.   
  
Dylan sighed. "So, you believe what he said? That he always gets on everyone's nerves? That because of him Hohne is dead, and Rev is gone? That he screws up all the time?" No one said anything, until Tyr broke the bone-chilling silence.   
  
"I believe that he never gets thanks for all the times he helped us. For the countless times he saved the ship on our, er . . . many adventures. We [B]do[/B] take him for granted. That is no lie."   
  
Beka nodded solemly. "Poor guy. After all he's been through growing up on--"  
  
"Sorry to interupt you, Beka," Rommie interupted, "but Harper is in my VR matrix, listening to us."  
  
Dylan looked at Rommie. "He is?"  
  
"Was. Now he's talking to my core personality."   
  
Dylan pondered for a second. "Okay, we have to talk to him. Me, Trance, and Beka will go in the VR matrix. Tyr, you have Command."  
  
Dylan took the VR goggles out and gave a pair to Trance and Beka. They put them on, the interface was established, and they were thrown into the bowels of the VR matrix.  
  
"So. They really do care. What a surprise." Harper murmured to the image of the Andromeda, who was sitting down next to him. He let out a sniff. "Took them long enough," he whispered. Andromeda gave him a sympathetic smile. "They'll be here in 3.9 seconds, if you're ready to talk to them." Harper nodded to show he was listening. He had an unpleasant feeling that those short 3.9 seconds would be be the last peaceful seconds he would have in a long time.  
  
Sure enough, Dylan, Trance, and Beka materialized out of nowhere. Beka looked down at Harper's pitiful figurewith sorrow in her heart. She never thought that destroying an inter-dimensional tunnel would cause so much heartache for everyone. Trance was just worried about Harper's life. She still hadn't forgotten her vision, even if everyone else had. Dylan, of course, was concerned about Harper's apparant suicide wish. He had no intent to let the important engineer die. 'He's just depressed--that's all,' Dylan thought.  
  
"Harper, why didn't you say something to us before?" Beka asked gently.  
  
Harper let out a high-pitched, nervous laugh--the kind that people give before they go crazy . . . or when they [B]are[/B]crazy.  
  
"Yeah. What was I supposed to say? Hey guys, I'm feeling really depressed because a lot of horrible things happen--and has happened--to me. But hey, that's life, isn't it? And you know, I'm not the only one with emotional problems. Why don't you talk to Beka and make her talk about her own problems?"  
  
"Harper, you're the one with the most inner demons," Trance snapped. "How about the revolution on Earth? [I]Growing[/I] up on Earth? Having a horrible immune system? And how about being infested with Magog eggs? You can't just sit on it all. I don't think your parents would be proud of you."  
  
Harper looked up at Trance, with his jaw clenched, with a fire, a hatred in his eyes no one ever saw before. "What did you say?"  
  
Trance could tell she said the wrong thing. "Uhh . . ." Harper kept staring at her fiercely.  
  
"Uh . . . I said your parents probably wouldn't be proud of you," she said hesitantely.  
  
Harper stood up and stood eye to eye with Trance. "How would you know what my parents would think of me, eh? You never met them!" he yelled.  
  
"W-well I-I uh . . . don't have to because I know their son."  
  
Harper let out another high-pitched, nervous laugh. "You really have no idea what my parents were like, do you?"  
  
Trance frowned. "Were like?"   
  
Harper realized what he said and, ever so suddenly, disappeared.  
  
  
"Now what do we do? We're running out of time." Beka, Dylan and Trance came out of the VR matrix with cross looks.  
  
"It would appear that this predicament should be solved with severe optimism," Tyr's stern voice said over the comm.  
  
Dylan frowned. "What makes you say that?"  
  
"Well, look at it logically. The little professor is depressed, anxious and clearly sleep deprived. Optimism will allow us to get a very good idea of what exactly is wrong with him."  
  
Trance thought about what he said. "Tyr! You gave me an idea. When he arrived in the other aliens dimension, how hard did Harper hit his head?" There was a pause as Tyr considered his answer. "He was hurled through the wall like a catapault, and slammed into Ambassador Orgo. He was going very fast."  
  
"Okay. But did you see him hit his head?" There was an even longer pause, and Tyr's face appeared on the nearest screen. "I saw him . . . hit his head, but he didn't hit it that hard; Orgo broke his fall."  
  
"And when his head bled?" Trance pushed on.  
  
His head was bleeding severly . . ."  
  
"But there wasn't any blood on the wall or on the floor when I rescued him!" Dylan finished.  
  
"So, you're saying he bled and didn't bleed at the same time?" Beka asked, confused.   
  
Trance nodded. "The aliens did something to him."  
  
"But what? And why?"  
  
"I know why." Everyone jumped as Harper spoke. He entered wearily, his face set. "To use me as their human guinea pig."   
  
"When the aliens . . . abducted me, they pulled me into a small, dimly lit room and started asking me questions." Harper was with the crew in Hydroponics, explaining what happened to him after he was abducted. For the moment, everyone's jaws were dropped.  
  
"They talked to you?"  
  
"What did they sound like?"  
  
"Could you understand them?" Everyone was asking at once.   
  
"Hey! Be quiet. Let me finish." He waited until they quieted down before continuing. "The aliens who kidnapped me told me that there was a war going on in their dimension. The aliens that were attacking us opened the tunnel for no apparant reason. Think of it as retribution and killing people for fun. The war was really going badly for them. The aliens that kidnapped [I]me[/I] were . . . sort of like the good guys. They were fighting for freedom in their dimension. They look like the aliens we've been fighting, except they're a light grey. Anyway, before they could bring me back to the ship, the others came and attacked us, and they injected me with something, then threw me in the room where Tyr was." he finished.  
  
"How long was the tunnel open? Did they say?" Beka asked.  
  
"Uh . . . yeah they did. They said the tunnel was open for ten thousand years." Once again, everyone's jaw dropped.  
  
"Ten thousand years? But that's impossible! Surely someone would have noticed. And wouldn't the aliens have conquered everything? I mean, they wouldn't have stayed in the same system forever."  
  
But Harper shook his head. "They may have inter-dimensional capabilities, but they can't use it to go from system to system, they would only end up in a parallel universe. And they don't have slipstream drives." Dylan, Beka and Rommie nodded. Tyr was wondering if the aliens were telling the truth, when he realized something. "Harper, exactly [I]what[/I] questions did they ask you?"  
  
"Well . . ." suddenly, the ship rocked back and forth and explosions were heard attacking the ship's outer hull, harder than when they were fired on by the Magog World Ship. Alarms sounded, everything exploded, from walls to wires to plants, the glass window seemed to shatter, screaming wind was blowing in their ears, and before they could desperately cling to their last piece of hope, they were sucked into the endless vaccum that was space.  
  
'Where am I?' was Tyr's first thought as he woke up. 'And shouldn't I be dead?' He tried to move his arm up to his face, but found that he couldn't. He tried his best to look down at his hands--which was diffucult, owing to the fact that he was lying down--and saw his hands were tied. 'Inertial restraints' Tyr thought, then he noticed his unusual surroundings. But then he heard Trance's worried voice echo in his head. 'Harper's going to die tomorrow . . .'  
  
'Ow. I really need to talk to Dylan about installing those seatbelts' Beka thought. Her head was pounding. She was in some kind of rectangular room. But that wasn't what was bothering her. The walls were swirling and shimmering into different colors, some of which she never saw in her entire life. She also noted that she was lying down with inertial restraints to keep her from moving. But, she was able to keep her head sideways. She was surprised to see the rest of the crew slowly waking up. Suddenly, the tables they were lying on lifted up, and they slid vertically into the wall. Beka looked sideways to see Dylan, who was awake. "You know, we [I]should[/I] install those seatbelts." Dylan nodded. "Agreed. But where's Harper?" Everyone looked aroung, worry dawning on their faces.  
  
Half an hour passed. Nothing happened. They were starting to get bored. Trance was being mesmerised by the wall, trying to think of which probability would be the right one. Thousands flashed through her mind.  
  
It was a whole forty-five minutes later before an alien walked in. He was the same color of the aliens that attacked them. He seemed to take no notice of them trying to talk to him. He simply walked around, drawing blood from each of them. When he finished, ten other of his comrades entered and talked with him in a strange language. Then they drew out their pistols and prepared to kill the wary crew.  
  
Suddenly, the swirling wall disappeared, and more aliens appeared. But they were light grey. They killed their enemies. One of them turned to the crew and released them. "You do not have much time, now go!" he exclaimed.  
  
There was a flash of light, and suddenly the crew of the Andromeda returned to the bridge of their ship. They were all alright, and so was the Andromeda. The dimensional tunnel was closed. Everything was fine except for one tiny glitch.  
  
Harper wasn't with them.   
  
The End 


End file.
